2022 successful cancer researchers and projects

Katharine Lewis is a highly passionate early career researcher, contributing to lymphoma research. Katharine has led a number of international studies and made significant contributions to leadership and collaborations within the WA lymphoma research community.

Clinical Associate Professor, Nicholas Gottardo, has leveraged existing local, national, and international cancer research networks and resources, to help progress the testing of a promising new drug. This new drug has a broad application and is now in clinical trial. This is a major initiative that is advancing research both right here in WA, and nationally.

Professor Bruce Robinson has made an exceptional contribution to cancer research locally, nationally, and internationally, with an impressive track record of leadership, mentorship and collaboration. The outcomes and outputs of Professor Robinson’s research program have led to critical and longstanding improvements in terms of disease burden due to asbestos cancers, mesothelioma and lung cancer. It is due to this contribution that Perth is recognised as one of the leading research locations for mesothelioma.

Dr Karen Taylor, WA Cancer and Palliative Care Network

Ms Amy Epstein, Telethon Kids Institute

Dr Ramya Ramon, Royal Australian College of General Practitioners

A/Prof Lucy Gilkes, University of Notre Dame

By establishing a strong foundation for collaborative primary care research, we aim to provide insight into current practices, to assess the impact on GP visits and actions, and to inform policy in clinical practice recommendations regarding breast density notification.
This study will investigate the perspectives of GPs, via interviews and analysis of management for patients who received notification of increased breast density. Feedback incorporated into a focus group of GPs and key stakeholders will explore these recommendations to improve practice implementation and educational strategies, which will ultimately benefit consumers and clinicians.

The proposed studies aim to develop tests that can be done from a blood sample. These tests make use of new technologies to test for evidence of markers derived from the growth (tumour) found in the blood of patients with melanoma. These markers could serve as a guide of what is going on in the cancer.

I aim to demonstrate that in melanoma, these tests can effectively and accurately provide the oncologists with information about the growths, for them to take better informed treatment decisions.

After developing a new analytical platform that involves acquisition of large amounts of biological information from thousands of liver cells with unprecedented level of detail, the aim is to identify molecular signatures that can predict liver cancer before it develops.
It is important to predict cancer as early as possible as liver health can be restored before the damage becomes permanent and catastrophic. Early detection will improve survival and quality of life, as seen with other cancer types for which screening programs are in place.

My research aims to improve treatment options for patients undergoing surgical removal of their sarcoma. We have developed a gel-based immunotherapy that can be placed at the site during cancer surgery, to activate the immune system locally and destroy cancer cells. I will test several immune-activating drugs, delivered locally within the gel, in experimental cancer models. I will determine their anti-cancer properties and investigate how they produce their effect. This project will benefit a broad range of patients undergoing surgical removal of their cancer by reducing relapse post-surgery.

Our solution is to use the cancer killing immune cell, the natural killer (NK) cell, which can be collected from healthy donors, prepared long before required and given to multiple patients. Importantly, we have observed that some NK cells are better at killing leukaemia than others. We will use cutting-edge genetic technologies to understand why these cells perform better, and we will use this information to further enhance and refine the cancer killing abilities of these cells.

Our goal is to create a readily available NK cell therapy to ensure all patients can receive this life-saving treatment.

The aims will be to assess a promising new drug called anti-CD47 which blocks a protein on the surface of the cancer cells called CD47. CD47 sends a “don’t eat me” signal to the immune cells that clear away harmful cells, allowing the cancer cells to hide from the immune cells. Blocking this signal with anti-CD47 will allow the immune cells to detect and destroy the cancer cells.

The research will be done by implanting mice with cancer cells and allowing the cancer cells to grow for a period of a few days. Then, the anti-CD47 will be administered plus radiotherapy and after this treatment the tumours will be assessed. The cancer cells will be taken out and the tumour size, immune cell distribution and the amount of dead and alive cells will be analysed.
The benefits of the research will be to hopefully change clinical practices to include this new therapy, which will allow for children to experience less side effects and ongoing effects caused by treatment with radiotherapy alone. Combining anti-CD47 with radiotherapy will hopefully improve survival times and reduce tumour growth in our models. “

In this Honours` project, I will dissect the mechanisms that drive DS-ALL by adding several key regulators of lymphocyte development (CEBPD, NOTCH1) into DS cells to recreate leukaemia in test tubes. This will allow me to identify the key features of cancer growth and unravel new weaknesses.
Altogether, this study will provide new tools that will be used to prevent leukaemia and improve survival in children with or without DS.”

The aim of this research is to identify the role of a specific immune cell type, neutrophils at the chamosite post-surgery and whether these have a positive or negative effect on the anti-tumour immune response.

Using laboratory models of soft tissue sarcoma, we will analyse neutrophils that come into the cancer after surgery. Analysis of neutrophils will be done via laboratory tests which will tell us how these cells are behaving when they meet cancer. With this information, we can find new ways to enhance their cancer killing capacity.

Our goal is to develop a treatment that can be used at the post-surgical site to remove sarcoma and rid any cancer cells that may remain. This would reduce relapse rate and ultimately reduce the mortality rate of sarcoma patients with the possibility of eliminating the use of chemotherapy altogether.”

This is important to detect as it can help determine the likely outcome after treatment.
Despite vast improvements in treatment, 20% of children with ALL are never cured. Some who are treated and said to be in remission can still have as many as 1 billion cancer cells still within their body. The current detection methods for these persistent leukaemia cells are not very accurate.

The aim of this research is to determine whether a new type of test, invented in WA, can detect extra copies of chromosome 21. It will involve using different fluorescent dyes to identify the cells chromosome 21. These samples will then be run through the instrument (a flow cytometer), where they will be shone with lasers to see if the cells are marked with the fluorescent tags, as well as determining how many 21 chromosomes each cell has. We believe that this will increase the chance of detecting the leukaemia cells that have escaped treatment. This project will help to improve current leukaemia testing and detection methods, benefiting both patients and doctors and leading to better outcomes.

This research aims to investigate tumour cell plasticity by focusing on a group of genes called anoctamins, which are believed to control cancer cell behaviour. To do this, we will trial a new treatment that blocks anoctamins, which will improve the effectiveness of current anti-cancer treatments that have otherwise failed.

The benefit will be to establish an effective treatment option using a combination approach to increase survival outcomes for brain cancer patients drastically.

This information will be used to study four priority areas: What cell types are present in each tumour? ; Which drugs might kill these cancer cells, what fraction of cancer cells are likely to be resistant and why are some cancers resistant?; What changes between the cancer cells in a primary site when they move to a metastatic site?; and can new biomarkers be identified for early cancer detection and can cancer cells be detected in the blood?

New treatments are urgently needed to overcome drug resistance. One of the most exciting clinical development in recent years is the advent of immunotherapy. Immunotherapy harnesses the body’s own immune system to fight cancer. This treatment is already used for some advanced cancers such as melanoma, often with dramatic results. However, so far GIST has not been considered for immunotherapy. New research published in 2020 indicates that some GIST patients (approximately 50%) spontaneously display lymph node like structures which promote immune cell trafficking and indicate better overall survival.

This research proposal will build on these findings using our expertise in the field and incorporate a unique animal model to test how these lymph nodes can be induced to optimize immunotherapy. For this aim human cancers will be grown in a mouse which harbours a human immune system; this is currently the best model system for studying immunotherapy effects.

We will also collect clinical GIST cancer specimen and examine the numbers and characteristics of spontaneous lymph nodes by developing a new detection system. We expect that this will be useful to identify those GIST patients who will benefit from immunotherapy.

Overall, the goal of the project is to provide GIST cancer patients with new immunebased
treatment options by combining already available drugs, to overcome resistance and prolong survival.

The team recently showed a clinic-based targeted and supervised exercise and nutrition program to be effective in reducing fat mass by ~3kg in these men. The problem is that not all men would have access to such a program, such as those in regional, rural and remote settings, or have the financial ability to pay. Telehealth has emerged as a viable way to deliver healthcare. The aim of the project is to determine if the program delivered via telehealth is as effective as the supervised clinic-based program for fat weight loss, reducing cardiovascular disease risk, and enhancing physical and mental health in overweight/obese men with prostate cancer.

The study will recruit 104 overweight/obese men with prostate cancer and current or past usage of hormones and randomise them to a telehealth delivered program or the supervised clinic-based program for six months and then follow them for an additional six months. The clinic-based exercise program, which comprises of resistance and aerobic training, with nutritional advice will be the same as that in the pilot study and will be adapted to be delivered by telehealth using the latest technologies such as video chat with remote monitoring.

If the telehealth delivered program is effective, then it can be rolled-out at a low cost to patients, regardless of their financial position or where they live.

Headed by Dr Moira O’Connor, the purpose of the Cancer Council WA Cancer Prevention Research Unit (WACPRU) is to increase our understanding of individual and societal factors that increase the risk of cancer in the community, and, through this understanding, develop more effective policies and programs to reduce cancer risk in the community.